Though I'm usually for open-ness, I'm leaning towards making it private for teachers
I strongly disagree. As a teacher myself, I see no reason why there should be a separate teachers' thread or section.
That all sounds horribly elitist and will only foster a feeling of exclusivety that is inappropriate in the context of the
GZ.
Surely the whole idea of extended learning (learning outside the classroom) is to bring teachers and learners
together in an environment where those sorts of barriers, as fostered in a GZ just-for-teachers' section,
are not useful.
Surely this education section of the GZ could be a prime example of genuine cooperative learning, where the local
role of teachers is replaced with a more blended learning environment where we all get together- rather than
more them and us scenarios. Virtual teaching has its good and bad points- putting people into categories (apart
from age) seems somewhat unhelpful.
At the school I teach at, the many hundreds of textbooks there ALL have answer keys at the end of the book. It
is in the learners' interests that they should not 'cheat' by looking at the answers first. Indeed, an attitude by
the teacher of instilling trust to a learner can be very important: Yes, here are the answers- try your hardest to
answer the questions before looking at them. It is not as if there is a Galaxy Zoo exam people have to pass!
GZ is about citizen science, not citizens and a more exclusive set of people that call themselves teachers. Blended
learning is about getting outside a classroom mentality.
I also heartily recommend that all people should be able to put up lesson plans if they want to: how many will anyway?
This should be about learning-by-doing, not we give them lessons and questions which they have to answer. No! to
the idea of more control freakery.
With reference Vygotsky's Social Constructivism, this section can be a place which extends the idea of the Forum:
citizens creating an environment for shared knowledge, where they can find interesting ideas for everyone to use-
not just 'teachers' having some perceived right to 'priviledged' information. Has this been thought through enough?
